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Comment by boxy310 | Hacker News Reader

Before the printing press, there was dramatic variation in regional dialects of European nations. After the printing press, standardization and state centralization have been grinding these regional dialects into the ground. Even traditional regional languages like Irish or Scots Gaelic are going extinct.

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I live in a city with tens of thousands of east African immigrants (mostly Somali). It's fascinating to me, to hear the difference between how the adult Somalis speak, and how their children speak. The teenagers, having grown up here, speak in perfect, accent-free English. Will their children even speak Somali at all?

(As an aside, I totally love my little window into Somali teenage girl culture, just from riding the train and sharing a neighborhood with them. Their fashions are incredible, and they're so energetic and happy. Somali teenage boys, on the other hand, are just as glum and faux-cool as teenage boys everywhere.)

> perfect, accent-free English.

This is a myth. You mean they speak your local accent of English.

> (As an aside, I totally love my little window into Somali teenage girl culture, just from riding the train and sharing a neighborhood with them. Their fashions are incredible, and they're so energetic and happy. Somali teenage boys, on the other hand, are just as glum and faux-cool as teenage boys everywhere.)

Please don't be racist. Appreciate people without making convoluted assumptions about how their race and gender causes their behavior

> This is a myth. You mean they speak your local accent of English.

It's the most natural way that comes to mind to say that they sound like the other local native speakers.

> Please don't be racist.

I don't see racism here. I see broad commentary about a local subculture.

This is how integration works, when it does. The parents might stick to their own country-men, but over time the children will be raised in the local-schools, speak the local language, watch the local TV, etc, etc.

It seems more likely to me that compulsory education conducted entirely in a "national language" is the culprit here. How many of these stories involve "we were beaten for talking in $LANGUAGE at school"?

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